Tuesday, April 20, 2010

A pause to reflect

Yesterday I didn't write a blog post. It was an accident; I started writing about How I Met Your Mother right after getting the kids to bed, and ninety minutes later, when I was done, I simply forgot that I hadn't written a blog post yet.

Cursory research indicates that the last day I didn't write a blog post was February 29, 2008, Leap Day and the official Blog365 day of rest. My memory further indicates that I did miss a day at least once between then and now, but backdated a post to take care of it. (I think the situation was that I wrote a post but neglected to hit the publish button. I don't remember when or what the circumstances were -- only the slight twinge of guilt.)

What simultaneously alleviates my regret and makes it worse is that I had a relatively major opus planned, one that is intended to serve several purposes in addition to filling this space for one more day. On the one hand, that post will get written (and it will be fairly extensive), and I could say that it should stand for more than one day's effort. On the other, it's not like I didn't have an idea for yesterday! I just forgot to write it. Think of all those times when I had no ideas, yet got something posted. It seems a waste.

In any case, this relatively major opus will get cross-posted to Facebook (where it will serve those other purposes), in addition to appearing in this space tomorrow. If you arrived yesterday expecting to hear from me, I'm sorry. But maybe (as I tell students who are about to lose a highly-prized perfect 4.0 GPA) retreating from perfection (at least numerically!) gives this blog much-needed character. As long as I don't use it as an excuse to stop dailyblogging altogether, now that the string has been broken ...